Ramayana and Mahabharata of western civilisation.
Very little is known about the actual life of Homer, except that he was poor, blind and wandered from city to city.
There is a couplet:
“Seven wealthy cities claimed Homer dead
Through the streets of which,
Living Homer begged his bread.”
Adventure
Both of Homer’s works are absorbing adventure stories. The Iliad deals with the siege of Troy by the Greeks.
The Odyssey narrates the adventures of Ulysses, during the 10 years of his wanderings from Troy to Greece,
Some samples of Homer’s wit and wisdom:
“Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing sooner than war.”
“Put me on earth again, and I would rather be a serf in the house of some landless man than the king of all these dead men that have done with Life.”
“Like that of leaves is a generation of men.”
Some phrases of Homer have become part of the vocabulary of mankind: e.g. “winged words”, “rosy-fingered dawn”, smiling through tears” and so on.
Homer is to literature, what Socrates is to philosophy.
This is an extract from the book The Great Ones by V.K.Subramanian, Abhinav Publications, New Delhi
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